I’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid with some coworkers, and we’ve been having fun making fun of a lot of the silliness: Genome soldiers are genetically engineered to be the best except for the side-effect of extreme myopia. And an inability to store long-term memories of the fact that someone just shot at them. Or how Snake is a trained mercenary but didn’t think that maybe he should have recognized what a sniper’s laser sight looks like instead of letting Meryl get shot multiple times.
Anyway, somehow I remembered something from years ago. In 1997, back when the Nintendo 64 was still new, I found a bunch of addresses for video game developers. Some were even located nearby (this was back before most of them left Chicago)! So I wrote a bunch of letters, printed off of a dot matrix printer on my Apple II c+, asking them if they had any games they planned to produce for the N64. I made sure to let them know about games they had created in the past that I liked.
A number of the letters came back. The addresses I had for Acclaim, Nexoft, and Taito were no longer valid and the forwarding time had expired. Oh, well.
Koei sent me a newsletter, the Koei Connection, Vol 4, No 1. It included information about P.T.O. II, Heir of Zendor, Dynasty Warriors, Ark of Time, Sign of the Sun, and VirtuaPark – The Fish. They had a section to answer player questions, and I learned that I could order games directly from Koei. You could get Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3 for PC DOS 3.5 for only $19.95! B-)
But the coolest response was from Konami. I received a large envelope. In it was a letter:
Dear Gianfranco
Thank you for your interest in Konami. We do have several games coming out for the N64 such as International Superstar Soccer 64 and Goman 5 (Legand of the Mystical Ninja). Lets not forget NBA In the Zone ’98 the first 5 on 5 Basketball game for the N64. The possibility of having Metal Gear 64 has even me getting goose bumps. All that and the new Castlevainia on the Playstation it’s going to be a great Fall. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us here at (847) 215-5100.
All grammatical and spelling mistakes are preserved.
There was a P.S. “Keep on playing!” Quotes were preserved as well. B-)
So what was in this big envelope? A poster for International Superstar Soccer 64. A sell sheet photocopied to list Vandal-Hearts, Contra: Legacy War, Suikoden, NBA In the Zone 2, and Crypt Killer. “The Justifier Light gun for the Sony Playstation available now!” And the reason why I remembered it all:
There was this cool fold out pamphlet about a game I had never heard of. Metal Gear Solid? What’s that? B-) Below are some scans I had made. If you click on the image, you can see a much larger version at higher quality so you can even read the text if you’d like. And some of the text is pretty funny. “It is 3D functions of the 32-bit machine realize the possibilities of this game to its fullest potential.”
Note how this game is a “new expression of real time full polygon action!” B-)
I hope you Metal Gear fans enjoy it.